


Perfectly Imperfect

by BluBooThalassophile



Series: HfaB Universe [29]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 16:50:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15867732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BluBooThalassophile/pseuds/BluBooThalassophile
Summary: It was a Save the Date to the Wedding of the Century, and it should have been her wedding. She wished it was her.





	Perfectly Imperfect

There were words in everyone’s life that they didn’t want to hear.

‘I don’t love you anymore’ or ‘It’s me, not you’ or ‘I’m sorry but…’ or ‘There’s another woman’ or even worse ‘I’m gay’ (that one wasn’t as painful, it only sucked if a guy had been using you as cover to keep his sexuality from the world; then yeah, that one sucked).

And as Barbara sat in her chair, trembling, and staring at the Save the Date she’d received in the mail and the letter that accompanied it. The letter was unopened as she sat there in her apartment as she sat there at the invitation for the wedding…

The wedding of Richard John Grayson to Koriand’r.

Barbara wanted to scream, she wanted to throw things, break things, she wanted to curse this world for the cards it had dealt her and the perfection required to be her.

Her father, her uncle, her mother, her brother, they had all needed her to be prefect. She needed to be strong, she had to be happy, cheerful, she needed to have the strength to keep her front of being perfect up.

She had been that girl, the perfect one, she didn’t set a toe out of line. She was the straight A honor student who helped kids like Dick study, she was in gymnastics, set for the Olympics, she was going to college, she’d get a degree in criminology, she’d work her way up through the GCPD with her father’s aid, cleaning up the department. She was happy, she was good at being a friend, the perfect daughter, and the best she could. The only rebellious thing she had ever done was being Batgirl! And even that she had excelled at to be perfect.

And now she wasn’t perfect!

The Joker had shattered that perfection she had used to keep her life. He had taken it all away from her!

Joker had stolen her legs, her purpose, her life, her love, he had killed her as surely as if he had shot her in the head! In some ways Barbara had thought Jason lucky, lucky he didn’t have to deal with the pain of being invalid now.

But that was until she had learned Jason was alive, and Jason… Jason had come back and from what she had seen of him, he had come to survive a hell. And he didn’t even care!

Barbara shivered as she rolled away from her table, there was a knock on her door as she pulled down her tea pot.

“It’s open!” she called out as she started the tea. If it was a rogue or something, she didn’t care.

“Hey Babs, okay, so I was having problem with the Batwing programming, and Tammy is driving me nuts. I swear she’s almost onto the fact I’m in the Batfamily,” he said as he walked on.

“Yeah, sure, I’ll look at it,” Babs said swiftly as she tried to clean her tears away before he saw them.

“Babs?”

“I’m fine,” she dismissed. “Just allergies, I need to dust my fans again,” she lied pulling off her glasses.

“Is this about the Save the Date I’m looking at on your table for Dick’s wedding?” he asked.

“No,” she trembled.

“Uh-huh, why don’t you look at me when you say it,” Luke ordered sharply, and she glowered over her shoulder at him.

Barbara and Luke’s unconventional friendship; if it could even be called that, had been when the Court of Owls had acted again, and Dick, Tim, and she had needed help rescuing two years ago. Luke had found out his father was in on the Batfamily when Lucius had been attacked in his office and tortured for the access to the tech, Luke had found out and intervened. He’d just been discharged from his service, and he had actually been at WE for a job interview working Wayne Security and in their hurry and urgency to save Damian, Luke got swept up into their ranks and stayed. He and Kate, they stayed.

Now, Barbara had always known Luke, he was a few years older than she, and he’d been close to Dick when Dick was adopted by Bruce. She hadn’t really cared all that much for Luke, he was annoying to her because when she’d had legs all he had to do was stand and hold the ball out of her reach, Dick being a monkey would clamber all over Luke.

Then he had joined the ranks of the Bats, and now they had this odd friendship, that she didn’t always know what to make of because he wasn’t as annoying now, as when they’d been kids. God she hated him when they’d been kids.

He was always composed, perfectly, and tall, and smug, he had had the arrogance of knowing he was the best, smartest boy and best athlete, but the war had changed him. Now he was different, not as smug, and she found his presence tolerable.

“I’m fine,” she dismissed.

“You know it wasn’t going to last, Babs,” Luke said softly.

“What the hell do you know about it!?” she snapped as she spun her chair around to glare at him. She fucking loved Dick! Loved him with all her heart! She found herself glaring at Luke who stood there very calmly holding the Save the Date in his hands.

“You know, you can lie to a lot of people Barbara, but not to me,” he stated coldly as he stood and walked over to her slowly.

“You don’t know me.”

“I know a lot more about you than you’d think.”

“You wouldn’t understand anything I’ve been through for a minute!” she hissed.

“Oh no?” he mused humorless. “A bad thing happened to you, the world fucking forgot to stop and notice, kept spinning. You picked up the pieces, reesembled who you were before the bad thing happened, but that leaves a bitter taste in your mouth with a sharp tongue and bad attitude. You won’t let it go, that fucking feeling, it’s all you got some days when you wake up, it fuels you, it’s what drives you to get up some days. Other days feels like it’s drowning you and you want someone to hurt as much as you do because the world forgot about your pain.”

“You can’t even imagine,” she started.

* * *

 

“Dick and you, yeah, before you two had a shot, I’d have even put money on it,  ** _before;_**  Barbara. But now, you are so desperate to hurt someone and drag them down to your level that there’s no way anything you start with anyone would last. And it’s not because you’re unlovable, that’s the opposite of the problem here. The problem is you don’t like this new reality or the new you and you fight it tooth and nail to cling to a you that no longer exists. And that anger is why it wouldn’t last.”

Luke had known Barbara since he was ten, he hadn’t always liked her. She was younger, brattier, and annoying. She was also Miss Perfect, but he learned real quick to see through that. Then Dick had come along, and the poor kid worshipped Barbara’s façade; not her, the perfect façade he had met. Luke knew that was doomed from the start, well, maybe not before the Joker, but after it, it was all fucked to hell. And he’d watched Dick Grayson claw his way through the pain of losing his little brother and girlfriend, to only have the girlfriend cut him down and drag him down to her level of agony.

Luke was actually very relieved when Dick and Babs had finally ended. Kid deserved to be happy, he deserved love, real love, the love of a woman, not a façade, and that was where Kori came in. Dick and Kori, that was real, true, once in a millennium, soul mate, rewrite the stars kind of love. It was real, and Dick was a better man with Kori than he ever could be with Barbara.

No, this didn’t make Barbara a bad person, he actually admired her tenacity to pull herself up from the gutter and to find a way to adapt to her life. He had lost friends before their deaths because they couldn’t do what she had done. He had watched some good friends just give up. And while Luke didn’t always like Barbara, he could always admire her and play it straight with her.

The freckled redhead glowered at him, and her glasses glinted dangerously as they glared at one another.

“I’m not upset or hung up on Dick,” she stated.

Luke resisted rolling his eyes at that. And he wasn’t haunted by nightmares of Jason Todd; but that was tales for a different time.

“I’m Not!”

“Oh, no, I believe you Babs, to a degree,” he clarified for her.

“I’m not!”

“Barbara, he’s in love, he’s getting married, they have a beautiful daughter, who has stolen all our hearts. It’s okay to be hung up on it, but don’t get it in your head to wreck it for him,” Luke warned her.

“I would never do that!” she snapped.

“I know all about how you left her to die, Barbara, and I know about it from Tim before you think to go skins someone’s balls off,” he warned her as he held up a hand to pacify her. He had only learned about it when the teen was so sleep deprived and thinking about a coming alien invasion, the very aliens that had apparently kidnapped Kori from Kom and Lobo and had been annihilated by Raven; apparently. He didn’t know about that last bit for sure, as it wasn’t in files he could read.

Barbara looked like he had just fed her a sour apple.

“You’re human, I get it,” he shrugged. “But you and Dick, it was never going to work Babs, and you have to let it go.”

“I am,” she admitted bitterly. “I just… he’s my oldest friend, I’m happy for him, I really am. I get it now. But…”

“But.”

“It was supposed to be me,” she admitted softly and he walked over as he slowly knelt to her level. He pulled the glasses off as the tears fell and she furiously tried to wipe them away.

“It’s his loss too, Babs,” Luke reminded her.

She sobbed as she slumped forward, and he wrapped his arms around her. They weren’t really friends, but they’d grown up together. He’d been for forever, so they were something important.

“Hey, if you’re up to it, if you want to go, you can be my plus one,” he said as he rubbed her back.

“You’re just asking out of pity,” she sniffled against his shoulder.

“Well, partially, and partially because, he is the circus monkey and he’s important to both of us,” Luke smiled slightly as he pulled away. “And Babs, I don’t pity you. Admire you at times, and respect you always, but I don’t pity you. Never have. You survived, now you just have to stop pitying yourself.”

“I…”

“You. Survived.” Luke repeated that, because it was important.

Just like him surviving Jason Todd had been important, before Jason had come home and before he even really knew that it was Jason who had just about killed him.

“Why couldn’t he just love me?” she whispered against his shoulder.

“He does Babs, just not the way you want,” he assured her. Luke was tempted to hoist her out of the chair and flop down on her couch with her, but he didn’t. It wasn’t his place, so for now he’d just hold her.

They were kind of friends after all, and kind of friends did this for the people their cared for.

She smelled like lavender, and lemons.

It was kind of an odd combination to notice, as he ignored the kettle and just held her.


End file.
